Digital value
Tokens & Crypto
A token is a claim written into a ledger that nobody owns. What that claim is worth, who guards it and how the rules around it are changing is the subject of this department.
Long reads
Every read in Tokens & Crypto
Tokens & Crypto
Stablecoins
The quiet giants
The largest product crypto ever built is not an investment. It is a dollar that moves like a message, it settles trillions a year, and in 2025 it finally got a rulebook.
Tokens & Crypto
The halving cycle
The four-year clock
Every four years the new supply of bitcoin halves, and every four years somebody explains that this time the cycle is dead. The mechanism is real, the pattern is weaker than it looks, and the difference matters.
Tokens & Crypto
Ethereum
The computer that cut its power bill by 99 percent
In September 2022 Ethereum swapped its consensus mechanism while running, with billions of dollars on it, and nothing broke. What that bought, and what it cost, is still being worked out.
Tokens & Crypto
Tokenization
Putting the boring assets on chain
The first assets to be tokenized at scale were not paintings or apartments. They were treasury bills, and the reason why explains what this technology is actually for.
Tokens & Crypto
Decentralised finance
Where does the yield come from?
Every yield in decentralised finance is somebody else paying. Once you can name who, the risk becomes obvious, and most of the disasters of the last five years become predictable.
Tokens & Crypto
Custody
Not your keys, and the other half of that sentence
Self-custody removes the risk that a company loses your coins and replaces it with the risk that you do. Choosing between them is the most consequential decision anyone in this market makes.
Tokens & Crypto
MiCA
Europe wrote the rulebook first
Since the end of 2024, offering crypto services in the European Union requires a licence. The result is fewer providers, better protections and a set of rules the rest of the world is now copying.
Tokens & Crypto
Layer 2
The second floor
Ethereum decided not to get faster and to let other networks do the work instead. Fees fell by an order of magnitude, and the ecosystem acquired a fragmentation problem it has yet to solve.
Tokens & Crypto
Mining and energy
What the electricity buys
Bitcoin mining consumes as much electricity as a mid-sized country, on purpose. Whether that is waste depends entirely on what you think the electricity is buying.
Tokens & Crypto
Spot ETFs
The wrapper that changed the buyer
Spot Bitcoin ETFs did not change what bitcoin is. They changed who is allowed to own it, and that turned out to matter more.
Tools
Tools that belong to Tokens & Crypto
Buy the same amount every month
Savings Plan Simulator
See what a monthly purchase of a volatile asset does over years, under a return you choose, with fees, and with a pessimistic and an optimistic path beside the expected one..
OpenHashrate, power, price
Mining Profitability
Daily bitcoin revenue, electricity cost and margin for any miner, from a single machine to a container, at the live bitcoin price and the network hashrate you enter..
OpenCompounding rewards
Staking Yield
How many tokens a staked position earns over time at a given reward rate, how compounding frequency changes it, and what the position is worth if the price moves..
OpenWho gets what, when
Token Unlock Simulator
Model a token supply schedule: allocations to team, investors, community and treasury with cliffs and vesting periods, and see the circulating supply and the monthly unlocks over five years..
OpenBasics
Explainers for Tokens & Crypto
What is a token?
A unit of value or rights, recorded on a shared ledger nobody owns. The word also means something completely different in artificial intelligence, which is a genuine source of confusion.
02How a blockchain works
A ledger copied across thousands of computers, extended by a rule everyone can check, where changing the past would mean redoing everything after it.
03Proof of work and proof of stake
Two ways to make adding a block expensive. One burns electricity, the other locks up capital, and the choice shapes everything about a network.
04What is the halving?
Every four years the reward for adding a Bitcoin block is cut in half. It is written in the code, everyone can see it coming, and it happens regardless of price.
05What is a stablecoin?
A token that promises to be worth one dollar. Whether it is depends entirely on what the issuer holds and whether it will give it back.
06Wallets, keys and custody
A wallet does not hold coins. It holds the key that lets you move them, and losing that key is the same as losing the coins.